Semiconductor devices are used in a variety of electronic applications, such as personal computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other electronic equipment, as examples. Semiconductor devices are typically fabricated by sequentially depositing insulating or dielectric layers, conductive layers, and semiconductive layers of material over a semiconductor substrate, and patterning the various material layers using lithography to form circuit components and elements thereon.
One type of circuit component used frequently in semiconductor devices is a resistor. In some applications, resistors comprising polysilicon are formed in front-end-of-line (FEOL) processes in which other devices such as transistors are formed. However, in advanced metal gate processes, additional lithography masks are required to recess shallow trench isolation regions in order to protect polysilicon from being removed, and also for implantation processes of the polysilicon material of the resistors in order to lower the resistance, which causes increased manufacturing costs.
Corresponding numerals and symbols in the different figures generally refer to corresponding parts unless otherwise indicated. The figures are drawn to clearly illustrate the relevant aspects of the embodiments and are not necessarily drawn to scale.